Making the best of a bad job

���Hounded...scurries for cover,��� said the caption in a daily last week. Hounded? Who? Angelina Jolie? Shah Rukh Khan? Mahendra Singh Dhoni? Wrong on all counts! The celebrity in question is Shitikanth, an 18-year old who topped the fiercely competitive entrance examination to the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) this year. Overnight, this unassuming youngster���s life was turned upside down.

He became the cynosure of all eyes, from ordinary middle class families across the length and breadth of this country, to the Bihar chief minister, to rapacious coaching institutes, eager to have him endorse their classes. So much so the poor lad had to flee his home in Patna.

Incredible, but true! As true as the booming cottage industry of coaching classes that has transformed Kota in Rajasthan into a Mecca for IIT JEE (joint entrance examination) preparation! But then such is the hold of the IITs over the middle class psyche that lakhs of kids are willing to turn their normal lives topsy-turvy and re-locate to Kota, as did Shitikanth, in search of that elusive IIT seat.

What explains this craze, nay obsession, with the IITs? A single word: brand. Over the years, the IITs have built up a reputation for academic excellence that is recognised not only nationally, but internationally as well. Combine this with a socio-economic milieu where education occupies the high upper ground and IITs are the ultimate pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

It is no surprise, then, that state governments that once lobbied the centre for steel and fertiliser plants are now lobbying for IITs. And with demand vastly outpacing the number of seats ��� less than 2% of those who do the exam make it ��� it was only a matter of time before the centre caved in.

Six new IITs are to start functioning from this academic year, adding more than 700 seats and taking the total to close to 7,000. While this is good news for IIT aspirants, the not so good news is the IIT tag is unlikely to be of much use if the brand name suffers.

Dr Indiresan, the respected educationist and former director of IIT, Madras was among the first to point out the dangers of reckless expansion without ensuring adequate infrastructure. ���Institutions such as Harvard, Oxford or IITs are valuable only because they are exclusive. Once poorly trained students flood the market, their brand image is liable to suffer,��� he wrote in barely-disguised anguish a few months ago.

But does that have to be so? From the looks of it, yes. Why? Because the central government, concerned only with winning brownie points with the electorate, has simply ignored the crucial aspect of how quality education, on par with the existing IITs, can be imparted to students admitted to the new IITs.

Does that mean brand-dilution is inevitable? Or is there a way of salvaging the situation? Can the existing IITs, which have the most to lose from a brand dilution, make the best of a bad job? One way is to upgrade existing institutions that could make the grade with some support. Thus the Roorkee Engineering College, that has a long tradition of excellence, was made the seventh IIT a few years ago and now the Institute of Technology, Banaras Hindu University, is set to join as the eighth IIT.

But that will not solve the problem, especially since none of the six IITs slated to start classes this year has any infrastructure in place ��� neither buildings, nor laboratories nor hostels nor teachers. This is where the proposal to make existing IITs mentor the new institutes might help. Thus IIT Gujarat is to be mentored by IIT Bombay, Punjab by IIT Delhi, Patna by IIT Guwahati, Rajasthan by IIT Kanpur, Bhubaneswar by IIT Kharagpur and Hyderabad by IIT Madras.

The curriculum, syllabus, fee structure and other rules for the new IITs is to be broadly the same as the respective mentor IITs and in many cases, first-year classes, too, are to be held at mentor-IIT campuses. Since the reputation of the latter is at stake, presumably there will be some greater attention to quality than otherwise.

Unfortunately, instead of welcoming the opportunity to ensure proper benchmarks are set, some states like Orissa are foolishly opposing the move. Politics, it seems, must always win over students��� interest.